Zen Jennie

On TV, I am currently watching the A's play the Yankees!! Go Oakland! So as part of our classes, we have field trips once a week. For example, future field trips include Kabuki and Yasukuni shrine, so we never went to the shrine the last few times we were in Tokyo. Anyway, we had our first field trip last week and we went to Sojiji, a Soto (Zen) Buddhist temple. The temple was actually a large complex, with many different buildings and we were given a tour by a Buddhist monk. It was very interesting to walk around but the tour was all in Japanese, and not easy Japanese at all!! In Japanese there is a respect language known as keigo, which is a different way of talking depending on whether you want to humble yourself, elevate the other person etc. It can really change what you are saying - the verbs aren't just conjugated differently, but they become entirely different words. The monk giving the tour was using a pretty extreme form of keigo, which, along with some vocabulary that was new to me, made it hard to understand him. But it was very interesting to walk around in the different buildings. The temple has all these amazing long hallways and the floors have this beautiful dull gleam in a very rich dark brown color - one thing I did get from the tour, with Yumi's help, is that they never polish these floors. Rather, they clean them every morning, with the idea that they should be as clean as their souls. We also went into one of the main areas of the temples and meditated. Normally the monks will do it for three or four hours, but we only did it for about 10 minutes. In this sect of Buddhism, a monk will walk behind you with a big stick and hit you if you move - it's to teach your body patience and stillness so that you can sit for such a long time. But that, obviously, did not happen to us! The room where we mediated was very interesting (I wasn't allowed to take pics in it). It had all these long, low shelves with tatami mats - sitting on the mats, at an interval of about 1 and a half feet were these round, squishy black pillows that had a label stitched in gold on one side. The mediation was actually a carefully choreographed process (whether it's really like this or this was for our benefit, I'm not sure - Yumi would know, I should get her to post a column!) of turning around, picking up your pillow, setting it down in the right place for you, bowing, turning back around, sitting back onto your pillow, arranging your legs, turning back around while sitting, bowing again, and then the meditating started (or in my case, the feet falling asleep process started). I tried to make my mind empty and clear but the only thing I discovered about myself was that I was sleepy. I suppose I wasn't meant to be a Buddhist monk! After we finished touring the temple complex, we walked around the grounds - that's where all the pictures in this post are from. We also climbed some stairs up to a small shrine - the red flags are actually sort of commercial patronage flags - people give money and they get a flag with their name on it, along with some sort of spiritual benefit. But they make a lovely contrast with the green in the picture!! The temple was really interesting and a big contrast to the other things I've been seeing - both Tokyo and Yokohama are very modern, busy cities. In many places in Yokahama, it actually looks like you are in Europe - I suppose this could partially be because both Japan and Europe had to go through an extensive process of postwar reconstruction. Yokohama, as I mentioned, is also known for strong foreign influence. Anyway, it was interesting to see a different side of Japan, the temple was so peaceful and quiet which was a really nice change of pace.

Now, to give the people (that means Gabe) what they really want: the hotplate update!! There has been some crazy hotplate action going on here. And when I say crazy, I mean two hotplates at once!! That's right, Yumi and I have joined forces - we've been doing a lot of our cooking together, so now we put both the hotplates in my apartment and use them both. On Wednesday, we cooked scrambled eggs and potatoes - they both came out very well!! Another nice change of pace from Japanese food. So we have big plans for more hotplate escapades、perhaps even recruiting someone with a third hotplate - obviously, I will keep you all posted!!